AegisAI Perspectives · 111
The best email security for wealth managers and private equity firms checks each payment request against the sender's history and suits a small IT team.
See it on your own Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 tenant. No MX change.
Or get the Q3 2026 State of the AI Attack report (free, instant download)
The best email security for wealth management and private equity firms checks every payment request against the sender's history and runs without a large IT team, because business email compromise caused $3,046,598,558 in reported 2025 losses2. AegisAI agents investigate every inbound email for what it is trying to do, and remove the ones that fail from every mailbox they reached17. Score every tool on the criteria below.
Cover the payment request first. The FBI's IC3 defines business email compromise as a scam against people and businesses that regularly perform wire transfer payments, carried out by compromising email accounts and other communication5. BEC was the second largest cyber enabled fraud loss category in 2025, after investment fraud. Across all crime types, IC3 received 1,008,597 complaints with $20.877 billion in reported losses1.
At a wealth manager the payment request is a client asking to move assets. At a private equity firm it is a capital call, a distribution or a closing payment, sent by email between the firm, investors, counsel and the fund administrator. The overview of email security for financial services covers the wider threat list. Write each of your firm's payment flows on one line before you open a vendor deck.
Short on time? Watch the explainer, or book a demo.
Three Regulation S-P duties turn into buying criteria. The written policies must include a program reasonably designed to detect and respond to unauthorized access to customer information, and to recover from it6. Affected individuals get notice as soon as practicable, and no later than 30 days after the firm becomes aware of the access. A service provider must notify the firm no later than 72 hours after it becomes aware of a breach of a customer information system it maintains.
The tiered compliance dates treat registered investment advisers with $1.5 billion or more in assets under management as larger entities9. Larger entities had 18 months after the rule's publication to comply, and smaller entities 24 months. Ask each email security vendor that would read your mailboxes how it would meet a 72 hour breach notice in your contract.
The guide to protecting broker-dealer cloud email from account takeover maps the mailbox settings behind these duties. Ask every vendor for a sample incident record you could hand to counsel within the 30 day window.
A tool must read the request, not only the sender's authentication. Microsoft states that impersonation can pass DMARC checks when the attacker registers a lookalike domain and publishes valid DNS records14. Impersonation settings sit only in Defender for Office 365 anti-phishing policies, not in the policies every cloud mailbox gets. Microsoft's first contact safety tip marks a sender a recipient has never or rarely heard from.
FinCEN says firms can verify an emailed payment instruction through several means of communication, or by contacting others authorized to conduct the transaction11. The steps FINRA expects for emailed instructions to move customer assets set out that check for broker-dealers. Ask each vendor which of these signals it weighs together: a first-time sender, a lookalike domain, a changed bank account and a reply path that leaves the thread.
Run the same seven steps on every tool, with your IT lead and your head of operations in the room.
List your licences. Check whether you hold Defender for Office 365, since impersonation settings live only in its policies.
Check DMARC on your own domains. Microsoft recommends moving from p=none to p=quarantine to p=reject in stages15.
Connect the tool review-only, with no change to MX records, and note how many admin hours setup took.
Send a test capital call from a lookalike domain you control. Record whether the tool flags it even when authentication passes.
Send a test request to change a client's bank account. Record whether the tool explains the verdict in words your operations team can act on.
Ask how the tool removes a message after delivery, and who grants and revokes that access.
Ask for the 72 hour breach notice clause and a sample incident record.
Put the seven results in one sheet per tool before any pricing call.
The middle column shows what Microsoft 365 already covers, so the gap an added tool has to fill is visible.
| Criterion | Question for the vendor | Built-in Microsoft 365 controls | AegisAI |
|---|---|---|---|
| Payment requests | Does it check the request against the sender's history? | First contact safety tip on new senders | Checks every payment request against the sender's history22 |
| Lookalike domains | Does it flag a domain that passes DMARC? | Impersonation settings in Defender for Office 365 only | Investigates each email for what it is trying to do |
| Mail routing | Does it change MX records? | No change | Reads mail through the Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace API after delivery |
| Admin control | Who grants removal rights? | Your admin, inside Microsoft 365 | Removal needs write access your admin grants and can revoke |
| Outage | What happens to mail if it stops? | Mail flow stays in Microsoft 365 | Mail keeps flowing, detection pauses |
| Domain spoofing | Does it publish DMARC for your own domains? | DMARC set up in stages to p=reject | No edge. DMARC on your domains stays your team's task |
The last row gives no edge to an added tool, because DMARC lives in your own DNS. Score every row yes or no for each tool, then use the demo request page to run row 2 on your own tenant.
AegisAI agents investigate every inbound email for what it is trying to do, and remove the ones that fail from every mailbox they reached. It reads mail through the Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace API after delivery. Removal needs write access your admin grants and can revoke. It works with your gateway or Defender, and if the service stops, mail keeps flowing while detection pauses21.
Illustrative example, figures are fictional. Ridgeline Partners (fictional) runs a 30 person private equity firm with one IT contractor. On a Tuesday, 14 investors receive a capital call notice from a domain one letter off the fund administrator's. The domain passes SPF, DKIM and DMARC, as a registered lookalike can. The notice asks for $250,000 per investor to a new account. A tool that reads the request against the sender's history flags the new account and the first-time domain, and removes all 14 copies. Without it, one investor wires on Wednesday, and the firm calls its bank to request a recall4.
Run this scenario past each vendor and write down the step at which its tool would stop the notice.
Track three numbers from the first day of the trial.
Review all three on day 30 and keep the tool only if the third number stays under one working day.
The one that checks every payment request against the sender's history, flags lookalike domains that pass DMARC, and runs without a large IT team. Test it on a fake capital call before you buy.
An incident response program for unauthorized access to customer information, notice to affected individuals within 30 days, and service provider notice to the firm within 72 hours.
No. DMARC protects your own domain. A lookalike domain with valid DNS records passes DMARC, so the tool has to read the request itself.
Impersonation settings are part of the anti-phishing policies in Defender for Office 365 only, not the policies every cloud mailbox gets. Check your licence before the trial.
Call the sending bank at once and request a recall. The IC3 Recovery Asset Team froze $679,013,183 in 2025, a 58% success rate, and FinCEN reports better recovery when wires are reported within 24 hours.
